Chris Porter

UPDATE: You DO NOT have to pay an additional ‘seat charge’ to fly with flybe. By default, they select a seat for you and tack the charge on to your bill. You can deselect the seat and “continue” to the next page to remove the charge. Regardless, you’ll get a seat. It’s always a first come first served policy… just got to race everyone to the extra leg toom seats!

UPDATE 2: It seems other low cost airlines have started doing this too. Ryanair, Jet2, bmibaby and air berlin have all been reported to be taking part in the charge for a seat scam.

UPDATE 3: The problem is not in charging for a seat. Premium seats being sold for a premium, is fair business in my eyes. The problem is the lack of transparency. Don’t select a seat as default and make it difficult to un-select that option.

Low cost airliners are pretty well known for advertising a ridiculously low price then hitting you with the extra charges to ramp the price up.

Today I booked two tickets with FlyBe. While going through the checkout procedure I select my seats and choose the emergency door row so we’ve got some extra leg room.

I go to pay, hit submit, and in my horror realise I’m being charged a £30 seat charge. That’s a charge for sitting, and trust me, there is no standing option – I looked.

Luckily my password was incorrect and it spat back my order giving me the chance to go change the seats from “emergency” which cost £15 to standard.

Back to checkout … and I see a £12 seat charge.

At this point I’m a bit cofused.

Not only am I paying a fee to fly, a fee in taxes, a transaction fee and a fee to have luggage but also a fee to sit during the flight.

So I go back and de-select my seat options and continue. It turns out preselecting a seat guarantees you a place and you are charged for the service. Fair enough, it’s just not made clear.

So dodging this £30 bullet I continue and pay the fees to get us where we’re going.

With a £3 credit card fee on top. Another fee, this time a fee to pay the fees. ffs.

I was in Uganda last year, my first time in Africa. After some 5 star luxury I doned my backpack and went into the mountains – jungle treks, AK47s, volcanoes, smoking ganja in the ghetto, bungee jumping over the nile and two near death bus rides later I thought I was a pretty hardcore tourist.

But Uganda is pretty safe and stable and full of great friendly people. What I didn’t realise was I have nothing on Shane Smith and Uganda has nothing on Liberia.

Civil war, naked war lords and cannablism.

This, is the Vice Guide to Liberia.

Just an idea for a flyer campaign on the street. Instead of giving out leaflets to unqualified prospects willy nilly, instead, stop them and create an interaction.

You: “Hey, do you know the way to Porter’s Coffee Shop?”
Them: “Porter’s Coffee Shop, hmmm, no sorry”.

*big smile time*

You: “It’s down the street, left at the traffic lights and in front of Natwest”
You: *hand them one coffee free voucher*

People want to help people. Altruism makes us feel good and coffee makes us feel even better.

I’m rich. It’s just a mind-set. Being rich has nothing to do with the money you actually have in the bank, it’s more to do with your beliefs around money, abundance and happiness. A man with friends, a smile and an empty bank account can be more happy than a billionaire with a private jet and an Armani suit. So the richness of your experience is important. A friend once taught me, to really feel rich – just. stop. and. breathe.

But all this rich talk comes across patronising when you have bills you can’t pay and not enough money to do so. This is where most are lacking in one distinct thing:

Good Beliefs About Money

Your beliefs about your self-worth and how that relates to the money you can earn is the number one thing which will either propel you to wealth or pull you down into poverty.

For example, I want you to write a 1000 word article on the thing you know most about. For this…

I’ll pay you £2.
No, I’ll pay you £20.
Actually, I’ll pay you £200.
Scrap that, I’m going to pay you £2000 for a 1000 word article.
Hold on. I’ve decided. I’m going to pay you £20’000 for it.

At what point did you get that gut reaction? The one that says – uugghhh I’m not worth that much. You’ve just identified one of your beliefs about money. Could that limit you at some point?

“Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves” is a childhood favourite of mine. A belief most of us carry around – a one I fought against by literally throwing away my spare change till I built a detachment from small money. A detachment from small money will make you strive to earn larger amounts.

Beliefs are a fascinating thing that not only control our reality but are our reality. Your beliefs on money will sculpt your future earning potential and therefore dictate what you can achieve and do in your lifetime.

It doesn’t matter how much money you earn if you have poor person beliefs. You’ll always find a way to be needing cash at the end of the month. Your lifestyle will move in accordance with your income and if you overspend now, you’ll overspend them. An extra £100 a month isn’t the answer. New beliefs are the answer!

I’ve been lucky to of been born with entrepreneurs for parents and too of grown up with some elders around me that could help sculpt some excellent powerful beliefs. A couple years back I did a Beliefs Workshop with Matt Hudson of Mind International (a company I now work with) that helped clean our some old programs and bad beliefs and since then I’ve taken my income levels to new heights.

If you’d like to do a beliefs course with Mind International then let me know, I’m interested in doing another and would love to get something set up with Matt. Email/facebook me!

Old school brand squatting was big business and even bigger lawsuits. In a nutshell (no, this is me in a nutshell!) you’d register the name of a company or a trademark as a .com domain and then wait for the company to come along and either sue you or buy it from you. The risks weren’t too big and the rewards could be huge.

Then came along the “Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act” which took steps to stop that kind of activity and ICANN’s policy and process for allowing a trademark owner to get ownership of a domain.

ICANN’s process typically costs $2000-3000 dollars which still gives speculators wiggle room for profit. Would you rather pay $500-1000 for a quick purchase from a squatter or go through the red-tape and extra expense? Most will go for the easy life.

But today your official website is typically the least important web presence you have.

Online marketing is about interaction.

And the easiest way to interact is through social sites. Be it facebook, youtube or twitter most social sites give you the chance to own your own customised URL. Find me on facebook at facebook.com/porter.im

Introducing, for the want of a better catchphrase – social brand squatting.

It’s not always done for profit and probably mostly done by fans but the desired social url’s are being grabbed up quickly. Out of the 72 most popular social sites the vanity keyword ‘Metallica’ is only available on less than 20%.

Metallica don’t have active accounts on all those sites. But someone has registered them – and that could create a problem. From impersonating the official brand to spreading negative press under an official moniker.

Apple have become the victim of brand squatting as you can see here:
MySpace (/apple) = DJ Apple. Brand Fail.
Twitter (/apple) = Squatter. Brand Fail.

Protect your brand over every site (even if you don’t use it) or squat on some company names late to the game and see if you can profit and collect lawsuits. I use NameChk.com to quickly see the availability over many social sites quickly and then register.

Creating sites for affiliate marketing? Social site profiles rank quickly with few links. Create a hub page on a social site to promote a product and you’ll find you can get search traffic for little effort.